


Father

by ohmyfae



Series: Imperial!Noct AU [1]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: AU, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Gen, It gets complicated and messy, Kidnapping, endgame spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-04
Updated: 2017-01-05
Packaged: 2018-09-14 19:47:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 11,377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9199826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohmyfae/pseuds/ohmyfae
Summary: Noctis tries to recreate the bond he used to have with his father before his accident, but all the rules seem to have changed.A fic I'm filling on the FFXV meme, in response to this prompt: "Instead of Regis saving his son from the Marilith, Ardyn saves him but instead takes him away from his home. Ardyn raises him in the best(read: worst) ways he knows."





	1. Changes

**Author's Note:**

> This one's going to be a doozy.

At first, Noctis didn’t understand why his father didn’t love him anymore. He remembered bits and pieces from before the attack—large hands in his hair, the warmth of an embrace, a soft chuckle that didn’t sound anything like the way his father laughed now. It was like all that warmth had drained out of him during Noct’s long time in sleep, and Noct didn’t have the language to call it back.

The truth took a little while to figure out. Noct had let the monster strike him, let sleep take him. He hadn’t recovered fast enough from his injuries, had spent so long in his wheelchair when he could have been catching up. Worst of all, when Noct woke up, he didn’t even remember his father’s name. He kept thinking of him as Regis, when everyone knew that Noct’s father was Ardyn. Ardyn Izunia, chancellor of Niflheim.

If he’d been as strong as his father, he wouldn’t have placed such a burden on him, and his father wouldn’t have had to use up all that love just to keep him alive.

If he _became_ strong enough, Noct reasoned, he would be able to get some of his old father back.

The officers who worked in the fortress Noct and Ardyn called home started to call Noct Ardyn's “little shadow.” He trailed behind Ardyn at all times, a silent presence at his heels. He watched him from the corner of the room at meetings, carefully hid his vegetables during meals, and curled up on benches while his father sparred with human soldiers and MT units in the training yard. By the end of the day, he would usually be asleep on his feet, stumbling several yards behind his father as they made their way to their rooms. There, he would take a bath, brush his teeth, and stare at the mirror, trying to recreate the face his dad used to wear when he was happy. He would narrow his eyes, like this, and his hair was soft on the sides, like this, and his mouth tilted just a little at an angle…

If he timed it right, he could force himself awake several hours before his father got up for the day. When he finally woke at the right hour, he got up, tiptoed around his father’s bed, and sidled out the door. The MT patrols scared him at first, but he had the metal wristband that told them he wasn’t an enemy, and he held it up between himself and their jerking, shuddering bodies as he passed. Then he made his way to the training yard.

Okay, he thought. Start small. What did the human trainees do? Lie on their stomachs, like this, and push their hands out, like this, and lift up…

He was a little more tired than usual, at first, and his arms and legs were always sore, but at least he was trying.

After a week of this, he fell asleep at dinner. He jerked awake immediately, heart tight with panic that his father had noticed, and looked up at Ardyn at his side. His father was looking at him, eyebrows raised.

“I’m sorry,” Noct said, softly.

His father smiled, but it wasn’t the smile that Noct practiced in the mirror every night. It was different, tilted at both corners, strange in its unfamiliarity.

“You know,” his father said, in a low voice. “If you didn’t get up to exercise in the middle of the night, you might be able to stay awake through the afternoon.”

Noct felt himself start to shake. He tried to hold it in, biting his lip until it hurt. “Are you mad?” he asked.

His father opened his mouth slightly, closed it, and looked away. “No, Noctis. I don’t believe so.” There was a long silence, long enough that Noct started to fidget, and Ardyn said, “If you don’t mind waking up at dawn, I can teach you how to fight the way I do.”

Noct grinned wide, and his father’s answering laugh was so warm that he carried it with him all day.


	2. Lessons

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Noct learns about Lucis.

“Tell me,” Noct’s father said one day, while Noct watched him scribble on the paperwork in his office, “Do you remember any of what I told you about Lucis?”

“Lucis,” Noct repeated. He thought about it. The name felt right on his tongue, easy to say, like he’d said it a thousand, thousand times before. It gave him the same strange, funny feeling that he got when he practiced his father’s old smile in the mirror. It made him think of light, and hands, and safety. “I think so. It’s… something good?”

The look on his father’s face told him otherwise.

“Oh, dear,” his father said. “I see we’ll have to start over. Lucis, dear Noct, is a kingdom allll the way over…” he pointed to the far corner of a map over his desk. “Here. It’s where the monster that hurt you came from. A dangerous place, full of wicked kings.” Noct shuddered. “Kings who use their own family as weapons and tools for their terrible ends.”

“Why?” Noct instinctively curled his arms around his knees. “What’s the point?”

“The kings there have magic.” His father shrugged. “It’s connected to their crystal, and a ring that they wear. With that magic, they have done awful, awful things to people, so that their magic can grow. They even tried to hurt _me,_ long ago.”

Noct gasped, overcome with a fierce, heavy anger in his chest. “But they couldn’t!” He stopped, made shy by the strength of his outburst, but his father didn’t seem angry. He looked more… thoughtful.

“They were going to hurt you, too, Noctis,” he said, in a quiet voice. “You understand why I couldn’t let them. Why you have to grow up here, in this fortress that must be so boring for such a clever boy like you…”

Noct looked down, embarrassed by the praise, but still burning with anger at these cruel, distant kings. “Do people just let them do this?” he asked, at last. “Doesn’t anyone try to stop them?”

“That,” his father said, turning in his chair to give Noct his full attention, “is exactly the right question to ask.”

\---

Noct wasn’t sure he was getting any better at fighting.

His father kept making him do boring, pointless drills—“building up your muscle, dear one,” he’d say, when Noct would scowl and glower his way through another painful sit-up. But he realized that he wasn’t as tired as he used to be, and he was able to do more and more of the exercises his father taught him, and could run faster than he ever remembered being able to run.

One day, when he was good enough, his father was going to teach him how to use a sword.

His father fought in a strange style, different than the other men and women at the fortress. It was beautiful, and fast, and he seemed to skip through the air in bursts of blue, fizzling magic, throwing the whole training yard into chaos. Noct dreamed of being able to fight like him one day, fight with him, at his side. Together, they’d show the evil kings of Lucis that it was wrong to hurt others with their magic.

They’d take down Lucis, and everyone would be free.


	3. Confrontations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Noct and Ardyn have differing opinions on conflict resolution.

“Hey, Shadow, where’s your master gone?”

Noct scowled up at the young soldier standing behind him in the training yard. He never learned his name, but he always seemed to be around Noct, tripping him at lunch, stepping in front of him in the hall, smirking when Noct had to duck out of his way or stumble into the wall.

“He’s my dad, and he’s visiting the emperor,” Noct said. “Not like it’s any of your business.”

The soldier laughed. “If that’s your father, I’m the Oracle. You’re probably just some MT test subject he felt sorry for, so he’s going around telling people you’re his—“

“Stop it.” Noct took a breath. What would his father say? He struggled to find the right words. “You’re not even smart enough to insult me. MTs come from daemons. Do I look like a daemon?”

“I don’t know,” the man said. He tilted his head. “In the right light…”

“Whatever,” said Noct. He turned to go.

“Of course, with a father like that, stands to reason you’d look a _little_ like a monster either way.”

Noct clenched his fists. He turned to face the soldier. He took a deep breath, trying to will away the anger he felt boiling in his throat. Then he stepped forward and punched the man in the stomach, hard.

When his father arrived early the next morning, he was livid.

“What on earth possessed you?” he asked, striding into the room in a flurry of cold air, his jackets flaring out about him like the wings of a crow. When he leaned down to check the bandages on Noct’s forehead, his hands were shaking slightly. Noct knew he shouldn’t be happy, not when his dad was so upset, but he couldn’t help it. There was real worry in his father’s eyes, underneath all that anger.

“You should see the other guy,” Noct said, trying for a grin. Ardyn scowled. “He insulted you, Dad. He called you a monster. I couldn’t just let him walk off.”

“He fractured your arm, Noctis.” Ardyn’s voice was dangerous, low.

“Yeah? And I heard he had to get stitches. On his _balls._ ”

There was a short silence at this, and Ardyn swiped a hand over his face. “Regardless. Noctis. We win our battles with words before we win them with our fists. Do you understand?” Noct looked away, sullen. “Do you understand, Noct?”

“Yes, Dad.”

“Hm. Well. No more training at the yard until I say, and you will have to read a chapter a day on diplomacy for the next two weeks.” He ignored Noct’s groan of despair and patted him on his good shoulder. “Prove you’ll be good, and we’ll start fighting with wooden swords.”

“We? Me and you?” Noct perked up in his bed, struggling to rise.

“Yes,” his father said. “If you can keep up.”

Noct nodded, trying to put all the depth of his feelings into his face. “I will,” he said. “I promise.”

After a few months, Ardyn started taking Noct with him on his diplomatic missions. It was mostly going from the fortress to a carrier, to another fortress, to a bunch of rooms and back again. Still, it was new, and there were so many more people there. There weren’t any other kids, though some of the officers were pretty young, so Noct stayed with Ardyn for the most part. In some of the places they went to, like the emperor’s stronghold, people gave Noct uncomfortable looks and shifted away from him when they passed in the hall.

“It comes from having such an esteemed father as myself,” Ardyn told him, once, eyes twinkling at the self-deprecating joke. He was always doing that, making fun of his station, as if he wasn’t important. Still, the looks bothered Noct, and he never felt entirely at ease when he was there. When his father met the emperor, Noct would stand a little bit behind him and watch, yet again silent as his nickname, and try to memorize how his father managed to always turn the room to his favor. He’d been right—you _could_ win a fight with words before fists, but Noct had a feeling it was harder that way.

Swordfighting lessons were a trial. Ardyn didn’t hold back, and more than once Noct would be sent reeling into the dirt before he learned how to warp to safety. Warping—and magic—almost came easy. It felt right, the way the word Lucis had once felt right. The first time Noct managed to warp strike Ardyn with twice as much force as he would on his feet, his father was so proud that he snuck out to smuggle him cake from one of the towns nearby. They shared it together in Ardyn’s office, and it was the best thing Noct had eaten in his life.


	4. Enemy of the King

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Noct takes another step in fulfilling his purpose.
> 
> Warning for (not too graphically described, I hope) scenes of violence & death in this one.

Noct was fifteen when his father first ordered him to kill a man.

The man in question was a former soldier—a deserter who had been sentenced to death for abandoning his post. By now, Ardyn and Noct had been sparring with real blades for years, but his father had told him (quite reasonably) that he would get nowhere if he didn’t start fighting with people who truly wanted to hurt him.

Not that his father didn’t hurt him, sometimes. Noct had a few scars—on his shoulders, along his neck, one that went straight down his right leg to his heel—that he’d collected for not being fast enough while sparring. Ardyn had been very sorry, of course, and quick to tend to him, but still. Mistakes happened. His father treated them as learning experiences, and so did Noct.

The man he fought now was about twice his age, equipped with a long, sharp blade and bursting with a sort of anger that felt almost familiar to Noct. It was the same thing he felt, sometimes, like a pressure from nowhere that he couldn’t place, threatening to break free.

The deserter struck the first blow. Noct felt the weight of it, the angle of his body, the stance of his feet. Then he swept down and up, tugging at the soldier’s belly and angling along a path through his lungs. The blood that landed on Noct’s hands and face was hot to the touch. When the deserter’s corpse fell to the ground at his feet, he took a moment to watch as the dirt of the killing ground sucked the man’s blood down.

It had happened so quickly.

He made it all the way to the barracks restroom before he threw up.

His father found him there. He’d lost all of what he’d eaten that day already, and had resorted to retching his lungs dry with his hands pressed to the top of the toilet. He knew his father was there by the sound of his boots on the tile, and shivered as his father drew his hair back from where it hung (already so long) over his eyes.

“It will be easier,” he said, when Noct’s breath began to even out. “Now that you know you can do it.”

“Yes,” Noct said. He closed his eyes against the memory of the blood going dark in the sand. “It will.”

\---

At sixteen, Noct was allowed out on excursions that Ardyn discreetly called “not so diplomatic, in nature.” It was almost like a hunt of sorts, where he and his father—or he and one of the mercenaries appointed by his father—would seek out tombs scattered over the countryside and fight daemons, monsters, and even other hunters, on their way to claim the tombs’ power.

“The Kings of Lucis claim birthright to these weapons,” Ardyn had said, the first time Noct had taken one and felt the jolt of the spirit-blade strike his heart. “We are taking that power away from them before they have a chance.”

But it was strange. When Noct used those weapons, they, too, felt right in his hands. Like they were made for him. Which was wrong, because Noct was just a thief, keeping them out of the hands of the evil King who hid behind his barrier in Insomnia.

Soon, word of his presence began to spread. A young man with dark hair and the gift for magic, warping from place to place as he fought? It was bound to draw attention. At first, it was just a few scattered mercenaries, easy to handle.

But then came the Kingsglaive.

Noct had heard of them, heard that they used magic borrowed from the king. But the first time a man slammed his sword onto Noct’s from a distance of 20 feet, knocking him down to one knee in the grass, Noct felt a deep, unsettling disturbance, a weight in his stomach. The Glaive had looked at him then, almost searching his eyes, and warped back.

“Shit,” the man said. “I think it’s him. Can you see it?”

“I see it,” said his companion, a woman. She lowered her blade. “Prince Noctis,” she said, in a loud, steady voice. “Do you know who we are?”

How did they know his name? Well, any country had spies, he supposed, but Lucis’ was clearly lacking.

“I'm flattered, really,” Noct said. “But I’m not a prince.”

The two Glaives exchanged looks. “You’re Noctis, though,” said the first, his voice hesitant.

“And you serve the King of Lucis,” Noct said, in a pleasant tone. He smiled. The two soldiers visibly relaxed. Good.

Noct summoned his armiger and warped between them, still smiling, still calm, and felt nothing but disgust as they fell. The legendary human weapons of the King, so easily fooled? He dug in their pockets for written orders, but of course there were none. They bore a crest on their uniforms, though, in webbed silver. Noct turned one of them over to look, and for the first time in a year, felt the urge to be sick creeping up the back of his throat. Something about the crest was wrong, wrong in a way he hadn’t felt since those first confusing days after he’d woken up as a child, looking into the face of a father he didn’t recognize.

He wrenched his hands away from the bodies of the Glaives, and turned his face to the sun. It would be evening soon, and there was another tomb to find. No time for worrying questions about Glaives, or crests, or princes. Just the search, and at the end of it, the King.


	5. Shield to the Prince, Advisor to the Crown

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Noctis meets new people.

The next time Noct fought with soldiers of the King, things did not go so well as before.

The men who intercepted him in the Vesperwood were an odd pair. One was a dark haired man, heavily muscled, with a sharp look in his eyes. The other was a tall, wiry man in glasses. Not exactly what one would expect to be the elite of Insomnia, though Noct had to admit he himself didn’t cut much of an intimidating figure.

“Prince Noctis,” said the man in the glasses. Noct rolled his eyes.

“ _Again_ with the nicknames?”

The larger man looked pained. “I’m Gladiolus Amicitia. This is Ignis Scientia. They thought you might remember us.”

Noct placed his hands on his hips and rocked back on his heels. _Casual behavior throws the enemy off,_ he thought. “Why, have we fought before?”

“I suppose it’s true, then,” said Ignis, straightening his shoulders. “Gladio, you know what to do.”

The larger man pulled out a massive broadsword from a harness on his back. Noct let out a dramatic, gusty sigh and summoned his own sword, holding it almost lazily in a loose grip.

“If I have to beat you down to bring you home safe, I will,” Gladiolus said. Noct grinned.

“Don’t even know where to _start_ with _that_ one,” he said.

But Gladiolus was not one for banter. As Noct spoke, the young man charged him, striking with such an almighty force that Noct was thrown back, winded. He struggled for air and raised his sword, bracing himself for another strike.

This was wrong. You never went on the defensive against a person who outmatched you in strength, and you never allowed one enemy to gain all your attention. Noct warped to the right, out of range, but Ignis was somehow there, blades drawn. He warped again, and there was the swordsman, leaping through the air and flinging his sword down with an impact that shook the ground. The hilt clipped Noct as he dodged away, and Noct felt something crack above his waist. He pressed, tenderly, and winced. A rib, maybe two. This was bad.

But there the swordsman was yet again, like some perverse force of nature, bearing down on him with so much strength behind his blow that Noct felt his bones shake as he tried to block him. And then the man with the blades, aiming for an incapacitating blow at the back of Noct’s neck. Noct barely rolled away in time. He knew, then, that he was going to die. Gladiolus and Ignis were going to take him out, and then he was going to be sent to the King, and the King and his crystal would sap the life out of him to fuel their Astral-cursed city. He warped away again, but misjudged his landing and slipped, twisting his leg under him. He heard the snap of bone before he felt it, and the pain overwhelmed him for the only moment he had to run.

Somehow, nonsensically, he heard the man with the knives shout his name.

Then he felt something latch onto his chest, something that dug pincers into the skin around his belly and sent an electric jolt through his skin. An anchor, from an MT.

Noct looked up into the red light of a transport carrier, and grabbed the cage of the anchor in both hands as he was lifted up and into the waiting arms of the Niflheim army.

Ardyn met the carrier at their home base, his quick strides the only thing betraying his mood. Noct had applied an elixir to the worst of his wounds, but the pain had yet to recede, and he knew that it would take time for his leg to heal. But it wasn’t his physical wounds that worried him, not really. When his father ran the short distance up the ramp to his side, Noct turned his head away in shame.

“I’m sorry,” he said, choking the words out through gritted teeth.

His father lifted him up by the shoulders, looked him over, and pulled him into his arms. Noct returned his hold carefully, still overcome by the pain of his failure.

“Whoever did this,” Ardyn said, “I hope they’re dead.”

“They will be,” Noct whispered. “Next time, they will be. I won’t let you down again.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ignis and Gladio would wipe the floor with Noct, especially given that Noct has grown up isolated in this AU. Very little experience with teamwork = not being able to recognize it well in others. Also, being so set on doing things yourself/proving you are worthy to a parent who... probably doesn't care if you are worthy... can make you get overwhelmed very easily when things go wrong.


	6. Insomnia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Noctis visits Insomnia.

The night before he was to enter Insomnia, Noct smiled into the mirror.

He couldn’t remember why he started doing this, so long ago. But it calmed his nerves, and he certainly had plenty to be nervous about. His father was somehow asleep at the other side of the transport carrier, legs propped up against a deactivated MT unit. Of course. Noct had tried telling him, over and over, that he needed to be more careful, but Ardyn had laughed it off and said that only when Noct was his age could he have a say in how his dear old Dad took care of himself. Noct rolled his eyes at the memory. For an older man, his father never seemed to age. He hoped he could have at least a little of that good luck in his own life.

Tomorrow, there was to be an open audience with the King of Lucis, where supplicants could file in to the throne room, get a smile and a wave from their oh-so-gracious monarch, and file back out with the peaceful demeanor of the easily led. Ardyn had told Noct that it was his task to find the King, after it was over, and deliver him a message.

“Don’t kill him,” Ardyn said again, when Noct entered the main room. “I mean this, Noctis. You are becoming very bloody-minded in your old age.”

“And whose fault is that?” Noct said, with the faintest bow. He sat on the floor at his father’s side, rolling out the kinks in his back. “I just don’t see the point. If I’m there, why not follow through with it?”

“We need the crystal,” said Ardyn. “And the ring, but not yet. The timing has to be right. And for the timing to be right, we need to put him on edge first. Let him make the first mistake.”

“The Kings of Lucis made their mistake the moment they hurt you, Dad,” Noct said, quietly. His father reached down to smooth Noct’s hair, which fell nearly to his shoulders.

“Tomorrow will be a trial,” his father said, after a moment had passed. “You’d best prepare yourself.”

“So long as I can deliver your message without killing him,” Noct said. Even at nineteen, he knew he had nothing like his father’s skills at diplomacy and charm. He was still, even now, too angry, too coiled tight with that strange, uneasy energy he couldn’t shake.

Ardyn laughed. “Oh, Noct. I assure you, if anyone can hold the King’s attention tomorrow, it will be you.”

Noct wasn’t so sure, but he knew better than to argue. So now, the night before the main event, his nerves singing, Noctis lay out on the floor near his father and thought about the King.

\---

Noct still couldn’t believe how easy it had been to get into Insomnia. His father had taught him of a trick the Kingsglaive used, something that could only be done with magic, to work a hole in the fabric of the wall large enough to slip through before it closed up after them. He made Noct practice it for weeks before this day, and when Noct finally ducked under a turnstile and onto the wide streets of Insomnia, he almost laughed.

The city was…not what he’d expected. Noct was used to small groups of people, of regimented military types who followed protocol and never walked anywhere without a purpose. Here, there were crowds of people milling about food stands, kids playing some sort of radio while their dog half-heartedly walked on its hind legs, off-duty laborers leaning on fences and tossing each other drinks from a cooler. He’d never been around so much noise, even in his rare visits to Lestallum. He found himself shrinking back from it, before he remembered who he was. An Izunia wouldn’t be cowed by something as ridiculous as noise. He straightened his shoulders and smoothed his face into an easy, pleasant expression, forcing himself to look at the throngs of people as though they didn’t bother him.

He’d made it to the upper district when the crystal started to affect him.

It had to be the crystal doing it—there was no other reason for what was happening. Noct would see a stretch of road, or smell the jasmine flowers blooming over old manor walls, and be struck with a sense of familiarity so strong it felt like a physical pull in his stomach. He started seeing pathways in his memory before he reached them. He recognized the way the roofs sloped on the main street, making a curve that cupped the spire of the palace. It was becoming hard for him to breathe. He had to stop three times on the way, bending over his knees and squinting his eyes tight against the sight of the streets he shouldn’t know so well.

His father had told him the crystal worked on the body, but he’d never said anything about what it did to the mind.

“Tomorrow will be a trial,” he’d said. And he’d trusted Noct to overcome it.

When he made it to the palace, the crowd around the front gates was larger than any he’d seen. Noct balked at it, dreading having to push his way through just to induce the King with a five-second shot of fear. It seemed pointless, now, an exercise in getting close just to find out if he could.

Which it probably was, he had to admit. His father’s plans often came in layers.

Noct must have shown more fear than he’d meant to on his face, because he jumped when a hand smacked his back and a young voice said, “What a crowd, huh?”

He turned to the unwelcome disturbance. It was a man his age, with light blonde hair and the slightly rounded baby face of someone who hadn’t yet finished growing.

“Yes,” Noct said. “It’s a bit… much.”

“You’re telling me. I heard the King is taking a two hour break just to recover from having to stare at everyone all morning. Name’s Prompto,” he said, extending a hand.

Noct smiled and took it. “Izunia.” Best not to say his first name, not when members of the King’s armies knew it all too well.

Prompto grinned. “That’s a mouthful. So, what, were you wanting to say hello to his _royal majesty_?” He gave a little flourish with his hands, and Noct felt the tension in his shoulders ease a little. It was good to meet someone who didn’t seem convinced of the King’s near divinity.

“Not really. I just want to get a look inside. See how the other half lives.”

Prompto stuck his hands in his pockets. “Yeah? I might be able to help. I know a guy who knows a guy, come on.”

This wasn’t part of the plan. If he deviated from the course, there were too many factors that could ruin the whole operation. But something about the blonde man intrigued him, and Noct found himself following him as they wove their way to the right of the impatient crowd.

It hit Noct then that he couldn’t remember the last time he talked to anyone under the age of twenty-five. He wasn’t sure how to feel about that. He hadn’t been lonely, as a child, certainly never lonely, but the way this man seemed to effortlessly take him into his confidence, the way he made everything seem like a hilarious joke only they were in on, made him feel a little lost.

“Here.” Prompto pointed to a side door, next to a rough path wide enough for a car to fit in easily. “Servant’s entrance. You go in through there, my friend says the hall will spit you right out into the royal gallery. It's usually open to the public, anyways, so you can give them that excuse if they wanna know why you're going in the wrong door.”

“Thank you,” Noct said. “I think I may give this a try.”

Prompto laughed. “Well, I hope you may not get arrested,” he said, imitating Noctis’ tone. “Be safe, dude. Steal a teaspoon or something for me.”

“You bet.” Noct hopped over the gate and made his way to the entrance. The key was in making everyone else think you belonged there. No one could ever stop you, because they would never think of doing so in the first place. Confidence, his father had said. Confidence, confidence.

Noct slipped through the side door and nodded at the guard stationed there. “They come through with the laundry, yet?” he asked. The guard snorted.

“Missed it two hours ago,” he said.

“Wait, really? Thanks.” He gave the guard a little wave and strode down the dark hallway, which branched off into a dozen directions like the lead of a web. At the end of this hall was a large wooden door, which looked promising. Noct opened it, and walked into a nightmare.

He knew this place. It was the smell that took him worse than anything—cold marble and stone, the citrus of endless polishing, and the thickness of oil in the paintings that lined the walls. The tug in his stomach was back, worse than ever, and for a moment he wondered if he was going to be sick.

His feet automatically led him through the long, winding hallways, to the side door to the audience chamber waiting rooms. A guard stood there, looking bored, and held up a hand to Noct as he approached.

“Sorry, kid, King’s not ready yet. You’ll need to wait in line like the rest of—“

A moment later, Noct lowered the guard to the floor. He checked his pulse—Only unconscious. Good. Noct didn’t want to disappoint his father by killing too many people today. Not when he was—Noct smiled gently—on a diplomatic mission. Noct stepped over the guard and into the waiting room, where two more guards stood before the wide double doors that led to the throne. They looked at him in surprise, and Noct inclined his head.

“My apologies,” he said, wearing his father’s smile. “But I’m afraid I have need of an urgent audience with His Majesty the King.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HOO BOY OK  
> So Prompto is still Mr. Bouncy because, uh, he kept up a writing correspondence with Luna. Look, I've just... I don't want to write a sad Prompto. Let me not write a sad Prompto.


	7. Like Father, Like Son

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Noctis meets the King.

Noctis opened the doors of the throne room himself.

He walked smartly along the cold stone floors, head high, arms swinging in a manner that was not befitting a man in the presence of royalty. Around him, the guards along the edges of the halls stiffened. The men at the top of the high stair to the throne seemed to shift, gazes trained on him as he passed. And on the throne, grey-haired and featureless in the distance, sat the king.

“Your Majesty,” Noct cried, adjusting the timbre of his voice to let it echo through the cavernous hall. “I come bearing news from my father, Chancellor Ardyn Izunia of Niflheim.” He kept his steady pace, resolutely refusing to bow or lower his gaze from the face of the King.

The King shifted in his seat—it looked like his hands were clenching.

“Niflheim?” he asked, his voice sharp with anger. “What is an envoy of Niflheim doing within our borders?”

“Only here for a talk, Your Majesty,” Noct said. Oh, he was enjoying this. “And entering your fair city wasn’t _very_ hard. I walked right in.”

He slowly stepped up to the dais, which lay a few meters below the throne, and bowed, far too deep to be polite.

When he straightened, his world narrowed into a pinprick of horror.

There was something wrong with the King of Lucis’ face. Noctis couldn’t place it at first—maybe the cheekbones were too sharp, the cheeks too sallow? Could it be his eyes, too bright in a face that was aging not quite as gracefully as Noct’s father’s? Or maybe the crystal’s influence, subtly changing the King so that even a seemingly ordinary face was twisted with hidden malice.

Then he saw that those cheekbones were remarkably familiar. The eyes, so similar to the ones Noct looked into every day, his hair as soft and feathered. The same jaw, a little thinner, an echo of the one Noct dutifully shaved in the mornings.

“Noctis,” said the King, in a voice that Noct knew as well as his own.

Behind the King, a tall man with Gladiolus’ face—Clarus Amicitia, the King’s Shield, he had to be—jerked forward like a defective MT soldier.

“I never gave you my name,” Noct said, in a much quieter voice than before.

“You don’t have to,” the King said. Shakily, reaching for a cane at his side, he rose to his feet. “I gave that name to you.”

Noct shifted back as the King began to descend the stairs of the throne, and strained to regain some, if any, of his composure. He couldn’t speak. It was like a weight had settled on his neck, pressing him down, restricting all chance for rational thought.

When the King of Lucis looked down on him now, he wore the same smile that Noct had been recreating in the mirror every night for over a decade.

Noct stepped back—his heel landed on empty air, and he stumbled, craning his neck forward to prevent himself from cracking his head on the floor. He fell anyway, sprawled halfway onto the steps, and struggled to right himself even as the King continued to follow after him.

“No,” Noct said. “Don’t—“ Don’t what? Come close? What was he afraid of?

“Son,” the King said, too kindly. “I know this is confusing for you—“

“ _Don’t call me son._ ” Noct said it sharply, thick with panic, certain now that he was on the verge of some unknown precipice, and any shift could kill him, ruin him. The King nodded, approaching Noct as one would a wild animal.

“Let us have that conversation you wanted, then,” he said. “The two of us.”

Noct couldn’t breathe. He felt too warm, constricted by the heavy air of the throne room. He tried not to gasp for air, but he knew that his chest was heaving, his arms trembling as he tried to pull himself to his feet and failed.

There was no duplicity in the eyes of the King as he approached, none of the layers of emotion that Noct had to pick out of his father’s expression every time they spoke. The ring that blazed on one of the knuckles of the King’s outstretched hand seemed to pulse, and with each wave of pressure Noct could feel the tight, burning wrongness that had lived just under his skin for so long start to unravel.

“Noctis,” the King said, speaking the word like a prayer. “Stay with us.”

Noct summoned his armiger.

The royal arms spun round him in a protective circle, giving Noct the chance to rise to his feet. But now that he had drawn his weapons, he could see the King’s Shield approaching, fast and deliberate, the focused point of lightning to his son’s chaotic stormcloud. Noct looked from him to the King, whose hand was still outstretched, eyes still gentle, smile still kind.

He ran.

He was aware of hands reaching for him as he staggered down the long expanse of the throne room—he warped out of their touch, landing hard on his side, sliding on his knees, forgetting all of his careful training in pure desperation. He didn’t stop to fight, only dodged and shoved and slid under stumbling feet, causing guards and servants to collapse in unruly piles behind him. He burst through the front entrance to the palace and groaned at the sight of the crowd gathered there, all eyes turned to the breathless, sweating young man at the head of an approaching line of guards. He threw himself into the crowd and tore through them, trapped in a heavy current of bodies that just wouldn’t _move._

Then he was out, facing down the long stretch of streetways leading out of Insomnia.

He knew enough not to take the road. He sped through gardens and down alleys, slamming into walls and fences as he ran too fast to turn the narrow corners of the residential district. He could tell he was lost, knew that at any moment the guard or a Glaive would cross his path, knew that he had no choice now but to make it out to the road, or he was never going to see his father again—

His father. Ardyn.

Except now, now that he thought of that word, he could see another face, another smile, a narrowing of the eyes that made his throat constrict and his heart beat a staccato in his temples. He tried to banish it from his mind, and climbed over a walkway railing and into the street.

There. A man in a blue car, waiting at a red light. Noct flung open the driver’s side door and pulled the man out by his collar, throwing him onto the road before getting into the seat himself.

“Sorry!” he called, with more honesty than was comfortable. He slammed his foot on the gas and swerved around the line of waiting cars, narrowly missing a truck driving the other way at the intersection. If he could make it to the barrier, he could get out. His receiver in his pocket could contact Ardyn again, unhindered by the magic of the crystal.

An armored van veered over at his side, keeping pace with him. Noct screamed his frustration and jerked around it, tires screeching, but no—there was another, waiting for him at the next light, and he had overestimated the brakes of this stranger's old car. Where Ardyn’s car could stop on a dime, this one wheeled in an out of control arc, smashing into a streetlamp with a hideous crunch.

Noct stumbled out of the car and into a circle of Kingsglaive soldiers.

He swept his gaze over them, his mind hazy with fear. There were so many, but he’d faced multiple enemies before. If he used a broadsword, then warped through that gap of mages—but no. They all had the ability to warp as well. All of them, arranged about him on all sides, some even looking down at him from the overpass above.

“Prince Noctis,” called one of them, a tall man with an undercut and dark hair. “You are needed at the palace.”

Noct let out a barking laugh, choked up in all the bitterness, all the hatred, all the confusion of the past terrible hour. The Kingsglaive soldiers began to approach, carefully, weapons raised. All around them, obscuring the sky, the barrier flickered with the crystal’s twisted magic, blocking him from rescue.

Cornered in the streets of a city that should not have felt so much like home, Noctis Izunia fell to his knees and wept.


	8. Broken Things

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Noctis learns some hard truths.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning, there's gonna be some fallout of dealing with emotional abuse, here, and while Noct isn't intending to injure himself, self destructive behavior does lead to an injury. Just to let you know.

In the center of Insomnia, for the first time in over ten years, the palace had gone silent.

Servants skirted the back hallways, casting each other sideways looks in the dark as they hurried to clear out rooms, bring up new linens, dim the lights of the residential wing. They ducked around corners to huddle in quick, fervent conferences, and the one question that no one could fully answer wove through the corridors in a gentle susurrus.

_Was it really him?_

Noctis sat out of range of these hushed discussions, in a finely furnished receiving room decked in soft shades of grey and green. Gladiolus sat in the corner of the room, watching Noct and the King quietly in his father's stead. Noct was flanked by Glaives, who had taken a personal interest in the retrieval of the man who had been whittling down their numbers over the years—prince or no. Noct had a throbbing bruise forming on his right temple, and he shifted as though his legs and arms ached. He sat with his body tilted slightly to the side, his shoulder braced between himself and the King like a shield.

King Regis clenched his hands on his fine black suit.

“Noctis,” he said. Noct suppressed a shudder, but only barely. “I’m sorry. I need to know. How much do you remember, before your accident?”

Noct said nothing.

“I know you know me, son.”

“Don’t,” Noct whispered. King Regis grimaced.

They sat in silence for a long time, the King with his hands on his knees, Noct with his eyes to the window.

“I don’t… not much,” Noct said, at last. The King sat up. “Hands. The face you make when you… I thought…” He ran a hand through his hair, pulling at the roots. “I don’t know.”

“It’s alright,” King Regis said. “You’re home, Noctis. You have time to sort out what’s true.”

Noct finally turned to face the King, and the look in the young prince’s eyes made Regis draw back in alarm.

“I have three days,” Noct said. The King leaned forward, trying to get him to elaborate, but Noct turned away again, shutting himself off. When it was obvious that he would say no more, the King reluctantly bade his farewells and left the prince, the Glaives, and Gladiolus in the room together.

Slowly, Noct unfolded himself from the chair and rose to his feet.

“He’s trying to help you, you know,” said one of the Glaives. His companion shot him a look, but he continued, “He had us turn the kingdom upside down, looking for you.”

“Really.” Noct made his way to the wall, where he idly brushed the velvet curtains at the window with his fingers. Gladiolus stepped forward, suddenly tense and watchful. “Didn’t do a very good job of it, did he?” He pressed a hand to an upper window pane, testing the glass. “I had to come to him, in the end.”

“Noctis,” Gladiolus said. The Glaives turned to him, startled by the sound of warning in his voice.

Quietly, with all the calm deliberation of someone who had weighed all the options and found the best possible solution, Noct braced his hands on either side of him and kicked a hole through the three story window.

It took the strength of Gladio and the Glaives combined to drag Noct out of the fractured remains. He kept breaking free of their grip to kick out more of the glass, clearly hoping to swing himself down through the opening. In the end, Gladio had to pin his arms down and carry Noct, blood streaming down his legs and along one arm, into the infirmary.

Noct had to be strapped down to the table in order for the doctor to get any work done, and he’d spent the entire time glaring daggers at Gladio, using all of his training with Ardyn to rip the man’s character to shreds. Gladio took this all in silence, and saw how strangely indifferent Noct was to the pain of having glass picked out of his flesh.

“You have a high pain tolerance,” he said, when Noct was done tearing down every aspect of Gladiolus’ personality. “Sure wasn’t the case when I knew you, before.”

Noct let out a sigh and turned his face away.

“What happens after three days, Noctis?” Gladio said. He wasn’t expecting an answer. Instead, he watched the way Noct’s eyes squeezed shut for a moment as though in pain, and his fingernails cut into his palms, even though the physician had long since washed his wounds clean and wrapped his legs in gauze. When Gladio brought Noctis back up to his rooms, he didn’t mention the tremor he felt in Noct’s arms and shoulders, but filed it away in his mind for further consideration.

\--

“Your father isn’t Regis,” the nurses had said, when Noct woke up all those years ago in confusion and pain. “It’s Ardyn. He’s always been Ardyn.”

If people tell you something often enough and long enough, it’s very hard to believe in the hazy contradictions of your own memory. And Noct, young and frightened and trusting, had believed them.

He wondered why he was only remembering this now. Why he’d always assumed that life was right, that affection and care made up for wide chasms of unaccountable misery that he only knew how to translate into rage. He wondered if, somehow, he’d always known the truth.

Noct stood at the bathroom sink in his new rooms for a very long time, examining King Regis’ reflection in his own face.

Three days.

If something went wrong on a mission, Ardyn gave Noct three days to get himself out. If he held on for three days, his father would come for him, and bring him home.

And that was what he wanted, of course. It had always been what he wanted.

He was startled to attention by the sound of raised voices in the hall, distant, but heightened by the tile and piping of the bathroom. Noct recognized one voice as belonging to King Regis. The other could have been Gladiolus’ father, Clarus.

“—abandon this venture,” Clarus was saying. “Ardyn has turned him into a reckless psychopath, and you bring him in and treat him like a child?”

Noct bristled at this. Ardyn hadn’t turned him into anything. He’d guided him, helped him, made him stronger, which was better than anything King Regis had ever done—

“He is in _pain,_ Clarus,” Regis said, “In his mind, he has been abducted for the second time in his life, by a man he hardly remembers. Show a little sympathy—“

“Your sympathy is why he’s _here,_ ” Clarus snapped. “Ardyn wanted this. He turned him into this, and sent him to you to show you how thoroughly he has _broken_ him.”

“ _He isn’t broken._ ”

Noct took slow, steadying breaths, holding onto the edge of the sink with both hands. He closed his eyes when he heard the main door to his rooms open, heard the click and thump of King Regis’ footsteps, the steady beat of his Shield’s not close behind. He knew they could see him there, braced against the sink, knuckles white. He opened his eyes and turned to face them.

“Your Shield is right,” he told the King, and both men started in surprise. “My… Ardyn has always hated Lucis. It only makes sense, if he has the opportunity to take his revenge, he’d do it. No matter what he has to sacrifice.” He looked into Clarus’ eyes, his gaze steady. “You use the resources you have at hand.” He thought of all the Glaives he'd killed since he turned sixteen, the deserter’s blood in the dirt at his feet. The years of training in diplomacy, in fighting, in perfecting a singular ruthlessness of purpose. “So he used me.”

“And now that he’s done with me,” he said, voice breaking at last, “He’s never coming back.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If it seems like Clarus is being harsh (ok, he is) Noct did kill a LOT of Lucian soldiers, and sometimes people not directly connected to the situation can say terrible things without knowing how much damage they are causing. Clarus thinks he's thinking most about Regis' safety and presence of mind, right now, and it's giving him tunnel vision.


	9. Learning to Breathe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Noct starts to recover. Sort of. Okay, he sets some things on fire, but there will be recovery eventually.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> GUESS WHO REMEMBERED THAT NYX EXISTS IN THIS AU  
> GUESS  
> GUESS WHO

All things considered, Noct thought he had handled the news fairly well.

Of course, there’d been that ugly business on the morning of the second day, when Noct, shaken awake by strange, disjointed dreams, had set fire to the bed curtains. While his guards coughed in the black smoke and tried to put the fire out, Noct had slipped out of the room and made it three yards before Nyx Ulric, the most obnoxiously _watchful_ of the Kingsglaive soldiers in his guard, found him.

The ensuing fight was the best thing that had happened to Noct in days.

The Glaive almost fought like Ardyn. He was quick, relentless, using unorthodox landings when he warped so that he could hook a leg around Noct’s and pin him down fresh out of a jump—not something that was easy to do, when warping usually left anyone a little more than disoriented at first. He barely used his blade, careful not to hurt Noct, but didn’t seem to care when the both of them crash-landed in a corner fountain and knocked a painting from the wall. When the Glaive finally had him down, pushed against a wall in a small dressing room, Noct was almost exhausted.

“We need to do this again,” he said. Nyx scoffed.

“Not if you’re planning to wreck the place. I want to _keep_ my job, not get stuck doing traffic guard the rest of my life.”

Finally, someone with common sense. Noct could feel a laugh welling up, unbidden, in his throat, and tried to press it down. Maybe the ability to kick someone’s ass and then talk to them like an old, but unruly, friend was a prerequisite for the Kingsglaive. Or maybe it only happened to people like Noct. Broken people.

“Easy, kid,” said the voice of the Glaive, as though from far away. “Try to breathe.”

It took Noctis a moment to realize he’d started _crying._ He was becoming hysterical. This had happened once or twice, after the accident, and his father had told him to—

“Woah.” Nyx pressed a hand to his chest. “Don’t do that. Don’t do that, kid, come on.” Noct felt his hands being pushed away from where he’d clenched them, where he was trying to force his breath to still, to become like stone. The soldier grabbed his shoulders and shifted them under his hands, and suddenly Noct was breathing again.

“This happen… often, here?” Noct managed to gasp. Nyx raised an eyebrow.

“A lot easier to be a smartass when you can breathe, isn’t it?”

“Oh, he’s a wit,” Noct said, in a weak impression of his father’s tone. “Didn’t think… Lucian soldiers were allowed to have a personality.”

“Not like those Niflheim MTs of yours,” the man said. “They must be a riot in their off time.”

Noct snorted. “You have no idea.” He leaned back, tracing the curve of a scar that ran up his right arm.

“They do that to you?”

Noct shrugged.

“My fault anyway,” he said. “Dad—Oh, the look on his—“ He shook his head. “I tried to stay out past our agreed time, right?”

“What, like a curfew?”

“Sort of. Thought I’d go to Lestallum. So Dad, he calls in this carrier right in the middle of the city. Everyone’s screaming, the Cup Noodles truck is totaled, there’s like, three chocobos trying to take off at the gas station, and out jump four—count it—four assassin drones. You ever fight those?” Nyx nodded, grimly. “Yeah. One got me in the arm, I ended up falling off the lookout. Thought Dad was going to have a _stroke._ ”

There was an uneasy silence. Noct looked over and saw that the Glaive had a tense, drawn look in his eyes. Not pity, thankfully, but still unsettling. “Well,” Noct said, in a more subdued tone. “I guess you’d have to've been there.”

 

\--

 

Dinner was painful. Noct and the King sat in a small dining room, at a table too large for them, and engaged in one-sided small talk while Noct idly went about hiding his vegetables. The King seemed almost _pleased_ when he found out about Noct’s aversion to carrots, and gave him that smile again, the one that made Noct want to crawl under the table and pull out his hair.

Somehow, he managed not to.

After a while of this, Noct finally threw his fork down. “So I guess we’re not going to talk about how I nearly burned the palace to the ground this morning.”

“If you’d like,” said the King. “Please. Enlighten us.”

“Enlighten who? It’s just you.” Noct shrugged. “And the fifty guards trying to look like wallpaper, but I’m assuming they don’t count.”

The King sighed. “It’s not unusual,” he said, “for some who has… gone through something like you have… to want to go back. Can you say, knowing what you know now, that when you do, your life there will be the same?”

The silence that stretched in the dining room went on a bit too long.

“No,” Noct said, as though the word pained him.

“Then why?”

“He’s my father,” Noct said, and immediately regretted it. For a moment, the King looked as twisted-up as he _felt._ “I’m sorry.”

Noct suspected neither of them wanted to eat much after that. He felt sorry for the King, a little. It must be hard, to lose a son twice in one lifetime. But no matter how kind the King was, no matter how familiar his voice, Noct could never let his guard down. Not as long as the ring blazed on his finger, a stark reminder of the crystal that waited, hungry and merciless, in the bowels of the palace.

“Your ring,” Noct said. The King looked up. “It powers the crystal?”

“Protects it,” said the King. “I can use some of its magic, for my Glaives and to protect the city, but I'm sure you're aware--”

Noct clenched his hands together under the table. “At whose cost?”

“Mine,” said the King. “Of course.” He peered closely at Noct, suddenly thoughtful. “Have you heard otherwise?”

Noct shrugged noncommittally. “The empire,” he dared not say father, not now, “says that you, I don’t know, have to give someone up to it. They say that’s why the royal line is reported to have only children, no siblings.”

There was a shocked pause. “Reports in Niflheim are gravely misled,” the King said, after a moment. “They must think of us as monsters.”

Noct’s smile, when he could force it up, was wan. “Something like.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There will be comfort at the end of all this hurt, I PROMISE
> 
> Also omg the scene at the end with Nyx was my LIFE. My sibs and I would be laughing hysterically about something our parent did and we'd stop and everyone would be like, "Oh my god... are you all okay?" and we'd go, "..... Yes? Should we.... wait, are we NOT ok???"


	10. A Reprieve

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Noct and Regis have a talk.

On the evening of the third night, Noctis couldn’t sleep.

He’d been restless all day. When Ignis, the man with the knives, had shown up in a button-down shirt and sensible slacks to invite him on a tour of the palace, Noct found himself agreeing just to get out of his rooms. He started glancing down hallways as they passed, ducking into empty rooms, looking down the wide hall windows before Ignis, remembering Noct’s earlier escapade, gently pulled him away. He requested a look into the Council rooms and was politely informed that as a man with “foreign influence,” he was banned from all Council proceedings until further notice. Ignis had balked at that, which surprised Noct.

“You’re the prince,” Ignis had said, when Noct asked him about it. “Not a spy.”

“Technically, I’m neither,” Noct told him. “But they have a point. I’ve fought for Niflheim for years.”

There had been nothing Ignis could say to that.

Now, Noct stood in his bedroom and waited for the King to finish saying his farewells for the evening. He still couldn’t shake the feeling that even if Ardyn _wasn’t_ coming for him after all, that there was something in his plans that Noct had missed. Ardyn always had more cards at play, and so far, Noct had only uncovered one. Was his father simply going to let him go?

At the other end of the room, the King turned to the door.

“Wait.” King Regis halted at Noct’s voice. Noct ground his teeth before he could say anything else. What _could_ he say? He wasn’t alone—there were two members of the Crownsguard at the door, set on rotating shifts, with members of the Kingsglaive patrolling the hall. But they were impassive, hard-edged men and women, none of them nearly as likely to hold a conversation with him as Gladiolus or Nyx would have. It made him think of his room at the fortress, bare and featureless, only useful as a place for a few hours of sleep. He didn’t know if he could go back to that. He didn’t know if he _wanted_ to. 

The King must have seen something in his eyes, because Regis turned to the high, dark window and sighed. “A bit early to retire,” he said. “Noctis. Would you permit me to sit with you a little while?”

Noct had to work his jaw a little before he could respond. “If you want.” The King made to pull a chair over from the middle of the room, and Noct ran to intercept him. He set the chair where Regis indicated next to the bed. Despite Regis’ protests, Noct sat on the floor, his back to the wall. 

“Mattress is too soft,” he said. “How do you get out of these _beds_ every morning?”

Regis smiled. “They’re designed to make you want to sleep in,” he said. “For a monarch, it’s a unique form of torture.”

Cautiously, Noct smiled back.

“Tell me something.” Noct’s face fell at the words, and he drew his legs up, but Regis continued, doggedly. “During your visits to Duscae, did you ever see a small shack near the Alstor Slough? Next to the water?”

“Y-yes. I think so.” 

“Did you go inside?”

Noct gave Regis a look. Who had time to go poking around in abandoned houses?

“That’s a shame,” Regis said. “It’s been over twenty years now… well, longer than that… but I’m certain that if you looked closely, you could see the exact spot where Clarus had his foot stuck in the wall for an entire afternoon.”

“Clarus?” Noct blinked. “Your Clarus? The angry one?”

“He certainly was _then._ ” Regis gently massaged his knee, looking up at the ceiling. “It started when we found he was being followed by, ah, an _amorous_ Garula on the slope of the hill…”

Noct listened, staring at the King in almost horrified fascination, as Regis continued. When the King reached the part where the unlucky Clarus, trying to escape the Garula that had become lodged in the door of the shack, tried to kick a hole through the wall, Noct laughed so hard that he had to put his head between his knees to catch his breath.

Noct’s own experiences were shorter, less pleasant, but the King pulled the stories out of him all the same. Every time Noct would falter, or a memory would touch on something that made his mouth tighten and his hands clench, Regis would ask him strange little questions like, _and what did the sun look like, when you saw it through the meteor?_ or _Did you know the story behind the birds that nested in that tomb?_ and they would be off again. Noct had never talked so much in his life, and felt giddy with it, uncertain what he should say next or where he should go, stumbling through awkward stops and questions that went nowhere. The King kept up with him through the evening, even when Noct began to feel the pull of sleep catch at his thoughts. By the time the night watch had turned over, the new guards came in to find the prince asleep on the floor, his head tilted back against the wall, and King Regis ghosting his fingers over Noct’s long, dark hair.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mmmmm not sure about this chapter, to be honest. It's very much the deep breath before the plunge.
> 
> BY THE BY
> 
> I was blessed this morning to find out that there is amazing, wonderful, ridiculously accurate fanart of AU!Noctis out there in the world. Please, lavish the artist with your praises. [http://lanternbunnies.tumblr.com/image/155428374363](LOOK%20AT%20THIS%20)
> 
> (Also, I know you said it's ok for me to link this, but if you change your mind at all, let me know and I can take the link down!)


	11. Changes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Noctis makes a choice.

Noct jerked awake on the morning of the fourth day. The sun hadn’t risen over the upper city yet—the light that streamed through the windows was grey and dim. At his left, the King was sleeping in his chair, his head tilted to the side, arms folded on his lap. Noct leaned towards him and brushed his rough, scarred hands along the cuff of the King’s sleeve.

“Good morning, little shadow.”

Noct felt like his joints had locked in place. He withdrew from King Regis in what felt like a coordinated collapse—his hand twitching back, arm folding, back straightening. He turned to the voice at the end of the room with an involuntary jerk that almost frightened him.

Leaning with his back against the wall, Ardyn Izunia tilted up the brim of his hat and smiled.

“Dad.” Noct said it without thinking, more of a gasp than a sound. He scrambled forward, rising to his bare feet on the carpet, and was suddenly there, hands clasped on Ardyn’s arms. Ardyn pulled him close, one arm around his back, the other cupping his neck, and Noct let himself be pressed against the soft fabric of his father’s jacket. He let out a harsh, cut-off laugh, and breathed in the familiar scent of freshly laundered cotton, old leather, and blood.

“My boy,” Ardyn said, softly, but there was a mocking edge there that Noct hadn’t noticed before. Noct pulled back, and reached up to brush a black smudge from the side of Ardyn’s jaw. It was dark on his fingers, but he recognized the feel of it.

He looked to the door where his guards had been standing that evening.

The bodies that lay across the open doorway were twisted in a grotesque tangle of limbs, and they reeked of copper and exposed flesh. That must have been what woke him, earlier—either their deaths, or the scent of their deaths, drawing Noct to alertness.

Slowly, Noct turned to face the still form of the King in his chair. 

He let out a soft moan. He pushed back from Ardyn’s hold, stumbled to the chair, pressed his fingers to the bony wrist of the King and tried to will his own heartbeat to stop pounding long enough to check—A pulse. He was alive. Noct searched the King for an injury, raised a hand to his mouth to check his breathing. Ardyn hadn’t touched him. Not yet.

“Oh, Noct,” Ardyn said, his voice low in the dark room. “Indoctrinated already?” Noct turned to him, trying to force his trembling hands into stillness. Ardyn’s smile was rueful. “But then, you always have been rather impressionable.”

“You never told me,” Noct said, in little more than a whisper.

“Of course.” Ardyn raised his brows. “Why would I? Tell me, how did our old friend Regis respond when he saw your face before the throne?”

Noct struggled to work around the overpowering feeling of loss that gripped his chest. The man gently chuckling at the other end of the room had cared for him, had looked after him, had possibly even felt some affection for him, but he’d never been his father. The reality of it hit him so fiercely that it felt like a physical blow, made worse still by the fact that Noct _loved_ him, _knew_ he was terrible but _loved_ him.

“Noct,” Ardyn said, and his voice rang with the tone of an order. “Come to me.”

Dutifully, Noct obeyed. He left the sleeping King, tread through the pool of blood at the doorway, let his face be gripped by both of Ardyn’s hands. Ardyn touched his forehead to Noct’s, still smiling, but with none of the kindness Noct had seen in the face of the King.

“Let me take you home,” he said.

“You did that,” Noct said. “Three days ago.”

For a moment, the whites of Ardyn’s eyes seemed to flash a liquid black. Noct drew back, but he hadn’t been fast enough to miss the curl of Ardyn’s nails, impossibly sharp, tracing new lines down the side of his jaw. A warning.

“Don’t let’s cause trouble for your dear old Dad,” Ardyn said, in his most reasonable voice. He looked over Noct’s shoulder, towards Regis. A flash of blue—a sword dropped into Noct’s hands. Ardyn sighed, as though he were teaching Noct an unfortunate lesson in the training yards, and summoned his own blade. Noct wondered how long he could hold out before he fell, before Ardyn made it to Regis. The old scars on his body seemed less formidable when judged against the unmarked skin of the man he called his father.

Then there was a blast of warmth at Noct’s back, and a light that blazed off the walls in a white heat, turning the blood on the floor a mottled black. Ardyn’s face went slack in this harsh light, and when he bared his teeth to it, Noct saw darkness, like oil, creeping up the edges of his gums and along the rims of his eyes. 

“You will step away from my son,” said the voice of the King.

Ardyn laughed, but there was an echo there, a rough inhuman growl in the back of his throat. 

“I leave him to your tender mercies,” he said, and in one smooth, perfect motion, thrust his sword into Noctis’ side. Noct cried out, his own weapon dropping from numb fingers, as Ardyn pulled him down the blade in a mockery of their last embrace. 

“When you have your coronation,” he whispered, “remember to save a seat for your old man.” Then he withdrew, and placed a hand on Noct’s chest, pushing him free of the blade. Noct felt a firm hand grip his shoulder from behind, and he was thrown to the ground as nearly a dozen blades buried themselves into the wall where Ardyn had been a moment before. The wall was bare, the blades buried a foot deep, shining in the unearthly glow that filled the room. 

The King knelt at his side, touching the earpiece at his right ear. “Clarus.” he said. “I need you here. A physician. Call Cor and Drautos, count their men.” He looked down at Noct’s wound and scowled darkly.

“It isn’t fatal,” Noct said. Ardyn enjoyed inflicting pain, and he and Noct both knew that there was no point if your quarry died before the fun was over.

“You’re losing blood,” Regis said. His voice was calm, matter-of-fact, as though he’d dealt with uncanny sword wounds all his life. “I’m afraid I’ll have to move you.” He slid a hand under Noct’s back, and this, at least, was familiar. He helped Regis pull up his shirt to see the wound more clearly.

“Had worse,” he said. The King gave him a wary look.

“We’ll need to talk about that, son.” He tore strips out of the bedding to staunch the blood, careful that no fibers stuck to the wound itself. 

“Sure thing, Dad,” Noct said, letting his head fall back against the edge of the bed. The King paused for a moment before securing the makeshift bandage. 

“If it takes you nearly dying to call me that,” he said, in a dry voice, “I’m loath to think what the future holds.”

“It’ll keep you on your toes,” Noct whispered, and closed his eyes to the light of his father’s ring.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \-----
> 
> Hoo boy  
> What an adventure THAT fic was! Thank you to all of y'all for your support while I was putting this out there. My wife was VERY upset to hear about the stabbing at the end (sorry, hon) but hey, Noct will pull through. Ardyn just wanted to make a point--even with Regis' magic and the armiger, he could still hurt Noct at any time. But, um, Noct is now safe at the palace and nothing terrible will ever happen to him again. Promise.
> 
> There are quite a number of scenes I had to cut from this, including a whole side-plot involving the Kingsglaive, but I'm probably going to be posting those on my blog (after polishing them a little) at faewritesthings.tumblr.com if any of you all are interested! (but would it be better to post it on here too? idk I don't know how to feel about posting unfinished excerpts on here...)


End file.
